What the H#$$?
From NYT:
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Kenneth L. Lay, the former Enron executive, who died of heart failure in July while on vacation in Colorado.
Judge Simeon T. Lake III ruled that the conviction must be voided because Mr. Lay cannot pursue an appeal his guilty verdict.
The decision, which had been expected, prevents the government from trying to seize more than $43.5 million from Mr. Lay’s estate that prosecutors claimed he stole from Enron before it collapsed in 2001.
Mr. Lay, who was 64, died about six weeks after he and another former chief executive, Jeffrey K. Skilling, were convicted of spearheading the fraud that led to Enron’s collapse in December 2001.
“We’re very pleased that the criminal case against Mr. Lay is now over,” said Sam Buffone, the lawyer who successfully filed the motions to have both Mr. Lay’s indictment and conviction dismissed. A jury found Mr. Lay guilty in May of six counts of conspiracy and fraud, and Judge Lake, in a separate trial, found him guilty of four counts of bank fraud.
Mr. Skilling, who was convicted of 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading, is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday. more
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I do not believe in conspiracy theories, for the most part. But now this may be one of the best cases for conspiracy theory. Why would the judge have overturned Ken Lay’s conviction? So, because the man is dead his conviction is overturned? So his wife gets to spend millions of dollars that were gotten illegally? The whole thing sounds so very fishy to me. Kenneth Lay, the face of corporate corruption, dies only two weeks after his conviction. The whole thing sounds just too convenient. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sitting on an island somewhere like Kathleen Turner’s character in the movie Body Heat sipping some frozen drink with a little umbrella in it.
